Whats the deal on the 76 912E Bus style engine? Is it good? Can it be made to make more HP than the stock 90 and still run good?
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Marty--that engine might be a 2 liter Type IV. Yes, they can go pretty good (!!) but wait on a response from someone who knows about what you asked.
That's a great engine, Marty. It's a Type 4-- they were used in Type 2 buses (there's a source of confusion, right there), 914s, and the 912e. The 2.0 l Porsche engines had better heads.
With a set of Dells or Webers, and a reasonably careful build, it'd do WAY better than 90 hp.
Looking at a 912e?
In '73 same engine put out 95hp in the 914 - emissions strangled it and the then modern but now primitive electronic fuel injection held power down. Jake Raby has a 912E (or his wife) that pumps out 130hp. They are rare 1 year cars. A Subbie engine would fit right in there! Fess up Marty.
Marty:
To answer your question more directly, those were much sought-after by the racing set for a year or two, but the Jetronic fuel injection was usually jettisoned for racing. In stock form (highly restricted, though it was) it did an honest 110hp with gobs of torque. Well set up engines (read that custom ported heads and really well-tuned exhaust collectors) smoked along at something north of 160hp at higher revs but STILL with surprising torque in the mid-range. Given all that, they would be smoked by a factory Suby engine, today, from an Impreza.
Thanks. It's just a pipe dream but it would be cool to have a coupe that I could have built up that I could really beat the snot out of.
The engine is basically the '76 914 spec Type 4, but with a different FI system..
The engines are rated at 76HP factory. With stock FI I take them to 120-125HP; with carbs or programmable FI its easy to get 150+.
I own 3, 912Es (#974, 985 and 1615) and we do more 912E specific engine work than any shop in the world. See what my engine looked like after I pulled it from #985 in 2010 after 160,000 miles. I built that engine in 2002 and beat it hard everyday. I never serviced it, neglected and abused it and never cared if it blew up. It never did, I only pulled it apart because the tranny was screwed after 300,000 miles